Don tugged at the hatch, his fingers curled under the overhang, but it refused to come up.
“Locked tight, captain,” Don said.
Captain Blow tried but was no more successful than Don had been. “We’ll have to smash it open, then,” he said. “Pass over that axe, Jim.”
Jim handed the captain the axe, and the latter, heaving it high above his head, sent it crashing down into the boards of the hatch. The crash sounded startlingly loud out there in the silence of the sea, but the captain paid no attention. Once more he raised the axe and sent it flashing down, and this time it broke through the wood. The captain began to chop around the hole and soon scattered the wood right and left.
“That’s finished,” he said, laying the axe aside. “Now we’ll look this ship over in earnest.”
He turned the beam of the light down and they saw a short flight of black wooden steps running down to the forward hold. The captain hung his feet over the edge and began to descend. Jim followed and Don came last.
They made the hold in safety and paused to listen. The ship was silent except for the gentle lapping of the waves, and the captain turned the light on all sides of the hold. It had evidently once been a storage room for the schooner, for closets and chests were built into the hull and shelves ran to the roof that the deck formed. There was one bunk well forward and the light stopped there. They looked closely and at length Don spoke.
“Doesn’t that look like some one to you, captain?”
Before the old sailor could reply a blanket was tossed aside on the bunk and a man sprang up. He was tall and thin, with unnaturally bright eyes, and the captain roared recognition.
“Why, Timmy Tompkins! What the devil are you doing here?”